Products - 3/04 - Part 1

Its first 3D gaming chip for cell phones, the ATI Imageon 2300 brings advanced 2D and 3D graphics performance to mobile phones. The company's new co-processors benefit game developers, who are no longer limited by simplistic game designs for the mobile format. To enable hardware-accelerated 3D gaming experiences, the Imageon 2300 employs a 3D engine in a power-efficient multimedia companion chip designed specifically for the latest generation (2.5g and 3g) of feature-rich mobile phones and handheld devices. In addition to supporting the OpenGL ES rendering API, the Imageon 2300 offers video capture ports with support for high-resolution camera sensors, JPEG CODEC for compressing and decompressing images, two display engines, an embedded frame buffer, and MPEG 4 decoding with real-time video playback.

ATI also extended its line of mobile graphics processors with the Mobility Radeon 9700. The Mobility Radeon 9700 is said to be the first chip for mobile computers to ship with TSMC's Low-K technology, enabling high clock speeds while re-ducing power consumption. PowerPlay 4.0 power management further lengthens battery life, whereas full floating-point precision, programmable shaders, 6X full-scene anti-aliasing, and 16X anisotropic filtering lend to cinematic visual quality. VPU Recover enables crash-proof graphics, while support for Microsoft's DirectX 9.0 technology drives more than 100 of the top DirectX 9.0 game titles. —Courtney E. Howard
ATI Technologies; www.ati.com

Maxon will be on hand at the upcoming Game Developers Conference to introduce attendees to its latest software so-lution, BodyPaint 3D Release 2.

During the exhibition, Maxon will demonstrate many new features of its 3D painting program that are well suited to the gaming community, including an entirely new work flow. A Painting Set-up Wizard contributes to the software's ease of use, whereas enhanced support for Adobe Photoshop filters and Alias's Maya extends its flexibility and functionality.

Now available for Windows and Macintosh operating systems, BodyPaint 3D Release 2 carries a $795 price tag. BodyPaint 3D is available to students, teachers, and schools at a discounted price. —CEH
Maxon; www.maxon.net

Image courtesy artists from MBA-Studios for the game Sacred from game distributor Ascaron.

Media 100 has introduced Version 3.0, reportedly the largest software expansion of its 844/X video editing system since its inception in 2002.

Version 3.0 takes advantage of the GenesisEngine's parallel image proces-sing pipelines to deliver multi-stream effects, such as glow and shadow. A new 10-bit keyer incorporates ad-vanced spill suppression and matte-based key operations, as well as provides users with expanded keying controls, such as luma, threshold, softness, transparency, and others. Additionally, 844/X Version 3.0 features performance optimizations to aid in editing longer-form, layer-intensive projects.

All-new 3D digital video effects (DVE) processing, support for XML-based metadata interchange, and a wealth of work flow features, such as user-definable views and presets for customizing the work space, complete the new offering. Media 100's 844/X Version 3.0, including both hardware and software, starts at $9995. Custom configurations begin at $20,000. —CEH
Media 100; www.media100.com

Game-development professionals attending the Game De-velopers Conference in San Jose this month will be among the first to see a preview of NXN Software's latest offering, Version 7.0 of NXN alienbrain Studio.

This latest release of NXN Software's award-winning digital asset management (DAM) system boasts several productivity enhancements. Among them are a focus on usability and seamless integration into not only digital content creation processes, but also pre-existing IT infrastructure.

Alienbrain Studio's user interface has been revamped to increase its intuitive nature and to reduce the potential for usability errors. Moreover, its Change Management Process has been enhanc-ed in Version 7.0 with a Change Sets utility, de-signed to add more structure and transparency. New storage management features enable users to take full advantage of available system resour-ces. At the same time, the newly upgraded version aids users with the removal of project-size restrictions.

Stitcher is designed to assist multimedia and 3D artists in the creation of quality panoramas for 3D, Web, film, and print applications. A direct response to user feedback, Version 4.0 provides increased support for popular image-editing programs including Adobe's Photoshop. Interactive Quick-Time VR previewing increases accuracy as users adjust QuickTime default parameters, whereas interface and work flow enhancements lend to time-savings and ease of use.

RealViz Stitcher 4.0 currently is available for Windows and Mac platforms at a cost of $499. Users of previous versions can upgrade to Version 4.0 for $180. —CEH
RealViz; www.realviz.com